That said...Fox' Chris Wallace just reported he heard from the Romney campaign "who is unhappy with us for calling Ohio for Barack Obama". Karl Rove makes a case that Romney can still win Ohio, says the call by Fox is "premature". In a trip to the Fox 'News' "Decision Desk" room, Megyn Kelly is told by their statistician that there aren't enough votes out there for Romney to win. The "Decision Desk" says they are "99.95%" certain.

UPDATE 9:14pm PT: OH Sec. of State's Results server is still down, though the rest of the site is up and working fine. The same thing is also true for Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), OH's website, which is working, but it's Election Results server is not...

UPDATE 9:30pm PT: The OH Sec. of State's server comes back up, shows Obama leading by 70k. And, as it does, Rove seems to suddenly back down and Fox "News" announces that Romney will, in fact, concede shortly...

UPDATE 11/9/12: Just for posterity's sake, below is an edited-down version of the 20 minutes or so during which Rove held Fox "News", and the rest of the nation, "hostage" on Election Night. Not clearly included in the cut below is the moment when Fox came back from break (as the OH Sec. of State's Election Night Results System was nearly simultaneously restored, as noted above) and Chris Wallace and Rove laughed off the momentary distraction, without even really referencing it, before moving on to the next point of discussion...

It should also be noted that during Rove's --- moment, or whatever we should call it, as seen below --- calls for Obama in several other states (CO and VA, as I recall) put him over the magic 270 number of electoral votes needed to win re-election. So, by that point, whatever may have been going on in Rove's brain or in Ohio, no longer mattered or could have made a difference in Mitt Romney somehow winning the election.

Once again, US networks are being incredible broadcasting winner before all votes are counted. I visited the Ohio Secretary of State's website and saw this message:
"turnout and outstanding ballot totals will not be reported until all counties have submitted"

THIS SUCKS!!!! They have been telegraphing BS for weeks...
this is IT.... I don't think the real vote count is the 1% it is showing as... I think they have been stealing votes around the country to make it look close.... so they could set-up a close situation and do the same kind of Steal as in 2004.....

THIS SUCKS!!!! They have been telegraphing BS for weeks...
this is IT.... I don't think the real vote count is the 1% it is showing as... I think they have been stealing votes around the country to make it look close.... so they could set-up a close situation and do the same kind of Steal as in 2004.....

This might just put nails in the coffin of US democracy, since Democrats, not known for having backbone or much moral fortitude, would feel no compelling need to reinstate democracy in the United States with hand-counted paper ballots.

I think there was a moment when they were thinking they might be able to do it, then the media screwed them by projecting Colorado for Obama and closing any pathway (even a total theft of Ohio, Virginia and Florida) to 272.

I wish there was a way to punish those two weasels Rick Scott & Jon Husted. What they have done to citizens & their constituentsis a travesty & should be illegal. Obama won in spite of their voter suppression & attempts to turn Fl & Oh into 3rd world states. I feel so terrible about what those two miscreants put the voters through, mostly minorities. Seven to nine hours waiting to vote was deliberate & must never happen again.

Thank you Brad for exposing the GOP Nathan Sproul voter registration fraud & the shenanigans of SOS OH John Husted with the voter machines & him & Rick Scott's attempts to shut down early voting completely. We won in spite of their dirty tricks. .

To the "True The Vote" "poll watchers" who denied voters water & food in line today, forged documents & were thrown out of Ohio...suck it you mean assholes. All that conniving & cheating & you still lost. God doesn't like ugly.

Thank you Brad for exposing the GOP Nathan Sproul voter registration fraud & the shenanigans of SOS OH John Husted with the voter machines & him & Rick Scott's attempts to shut down early voting completely. We won in spite of their dirty tricks. .

Yes, indeed! Brad Friedman is an actual investigative journalist (highly regarded around the world)), unlike sniveling, lying mainstream weasels such as Chuck Todd. Fox "News" is the real face of NYT and the rest of the mainstream media --- just a cosmetic difference in style.

Okay, to me this Rove equivacating on OH thing was a obvoius tell, they try to steal OH.

Around 9:30 they seem to give up, one because exit polls, demogrpahics and trends from previous election made the steal way too obvious plus CO, NV, VA (with WI, NH etc already gone) obviously going Obama made Oh a moot point and not worth stealing.

But the real tell: swing states were heavily, heavily polled, in almost every swing state Obama outperformed the polling averages, by close to margin of error or even more. He bested 538's poll averages in IA, NV, CO by 2 percentage points, in WI, V by 1 pt, in FL by 0.5 pts..in NC he underperformed by -0.5 pts (well within margin of error) but in PA he underperformed by -1 pt, and in OH, perhaps the most rigorously polled state of all time Obama underperformed polls by -1.7 pts, the biggest negative departure from polls of any swing state.

The attempted fix was in OH, (with a little play in Pa also) but it got overwhelmed by actual voters like overwhelming expected 3.5 win for Obama...changing a 4.5 or 5.5 actuall win for Obama to a win for Romney just to much of a stretch and given other states made OH irrevelant just about the time Karl gave up...I think many of us guess how this went.

My thoughts while watching this live was that there was a "backdoor" installed in the Ohio vote reporting system, and somewhere they were frantically trying to decide whether to flip the votes. Because it was only worth it if it would FLIP THE ELECTION --- if Obama still won, then there would be the possibility of federal investigation, criminal prosecution, or even just behind-the-scenes computer forensics that might uncover the mechanism and ruin it for the future. So maybe they backed out of it.

BTW, Megyn's march down to Fox's decision desk, her entry into room of computers and nerds and her blondness questioning even Fox's nerds call was priceless. I couldnt fully enjoy because Rove's little thing was unnerving knowing he could even at that late stage hope for a steal but still, I was laughing hard...this whole election was a win for people who believe in facts, science. Conservatives at work so upset by the early calls in states couldnt understand how Romney up after 15 percent of precinct reporting could be a sure Obama win....but dont get these two things: no was calling state before polls closed, and numbers guys can make these call surely with limited data because they have numbers, they know even if country trends way more to one candidate than expected, they can see when a win is sure, they know how many people voted, the have the demographics from exit polls, they have the precincts in to check their exit polls against etc...Repubs felt they would win this won, Dems thought they would win if not stolen..because they did the numbers.

my point is the fix was already in, but the votes for Obama overwhelmed it...how else do you explain Obama underperforming the significantly only in OH and Karl's schtick. Husteds expiremental software was doing its thing, but they were going to adjust it even more, but it was too much of a stretch and irrelevant at that point.

I got to hoping Mr. Create His Own Reality Rove would be hoisted on his own petard all the way too jail by attempting to steal Ohio again in full frontal nudity with a national media that had all called it(and with the evidence to back up the call)for Obama. My guess/hope was that even our in denial media would have had a gag reflex if asked to swallow that much bullshit right in their faces.

Concerning everyone's hypothesizing about what was going down vis a vis Karl Rove, election theft, and Karl Rove backing down.

This is one of things that drives me crazy about having no clue about what the process is--you can make up anything and who knows? Maybe you're close, maybe you're nowhere near. There's no way to know. You can make up stuff infinitely--it was the Israelis hacking in cuz some Israeli computer genius realized that Romney was just too dangerous.-- Can anybody prove that wasn't what actually happened and triggered Rove's retreat.

I would love it if we didn't have to spend an inch of brain power bothering to come up with the next unknowable explanation for what might or might not have happened/be happening on any given election night and the endless projections about hypothetical theft scenarios.

One can see how Rove & co. would stand down and let Obama take the heat in 2008, but last night I felt with Romney/Ryan in a close call, the election could be snatched for sure. And when Rove started protesting on Fox I thought it was going to be 'FL 2004' all over again... and maybe he did too. But when so many other states fell in line for the Dems they just shut it down to wait for another day.
ALSO- even if our worst fears about 2004 are true, possibly Rove & cahoots no longer have the programers and other complicit souls in place to use the machines as they did with Bush/Kerry.

In any case last night was a delight, and it showed that when there are high enough numbers the thieves are screwed.

the pres and his team,knew where his supporters were in ohio,precinct by precinct..the only way for rove to "steal" it was to run earlier reported numbers backwards...and potus knew enough to not let that happen

maybe anon did do a "redirect" but i am SURE potus team had more than screenshots to defend the earlier numbers anyway

by next week i will be bitching at obama to act like the libral we sent from illinois but right now i'm just proud of his math

I'm not qualified to know who to thank, but I'd reckon that voters should be mentioned, especially the ones who climbed over neo-Jim Crow voter repression obstacles, braved voter intimidation from goons pretending to prevent, voter fraud and weathered deliberately long lines and
interminable waiting, and maintained faith despite all the good reasons to think it could be rigged.

I hope that somehow, Obama can be reached and finally awakened to the threat to democracy voting machines pose. Maybe he's not as corrupt as the others, dare I hope?

I guess nothing got through to him recently (or he doesn't really care), since he actually used an electronic voting machine to vote. I know the Democratic party has all sorts of barriers and diversions away from this issue of such paramount importance.

dont count on party appartus or prominent party members to have issue with voting machines...its all about local activists wathcing their vote, forcing their counties to do the cheap, publicly verifiable way to cast and count ballots: paper ballots.

If nothing else, paper ballots eliminate long lines, that alone should be reason to go to them....they also save money as a machine is not needed for every voter etc...so if people dont buy election theft, at least appeal to ease of use and money saving of paper ballots. Everyone has to save money. In my precinct there were 25 people all filling out their paper ballots simultaneously during morning rush...if we needed a machine for each voter we either would have had to spend a fortune or woul have had a long line.

Lean on your county, lean on your coutny ellectio officials, do not wait for Dem party to do this.